Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Stressless sleepfulness

The past months have been stressful.  While I never have trouble falling asleep, I often wake early in the morning (anytime between 2 - 4 am) and find my mind is in turmoil worrying about my mother (regular readers will know that she has been living with dementia and that I've struggled to find the best way forward to give her the support she needs).  Recently I've been trying a few sleep apps and thought I'd share my experiences here in case other people are considering trying these as well.

First of all, many people will think that if you are stressed and unable to sleep, the last thing you need is more technology - I've heard this being described as being akin to having an AA meeting in a pub!  However having used the mindfulness app Buddhify for a couple of years now, I was curious to try the new app Sleepfulness by the same developers, Mindfulness Everywhere.  The app contains guided tracks designed to improve sleep - and you don't just use this app when you are in bed as there are 4 "timezones":  going to sleep, can't sleep, waking up and daytime.  The app automatically changes the recommended track depending on the time of day.  You can choose to end the meditation with music if you wish (though no matter which meditation I've tried I've always fallen asleep before the end!)

The app is free and 10 of the meditations that focus on relaxation are also free.  There are over 3 and a half hours of sleep meditations ranging from around 6 minutes to just over 20 minutes, and 4 other packs that can be purchased that deal with things like stress, anxiety and pain.  You can also buy an "Everything Forever" pack which gives you access to all the meditations and all the new ones that will be released in future. I like this idea much better than apps such as Headspace where you have to pay a monthly subscription.   The Everything Forever pack is roughly the same price as a single month's subscription to apps such as Headspace.

Another app I've downloaded recently is called Calm which has various meditations for breathing, sleeping and relaxing.  This is also a free app that allows you to make in-app purchases for monthly or yearly subscriptions.  There are also several free guided meditations.   This app is different in many ways from Sleepfulness.  For example there are beautiful natural scenes that you can look at along with ambient sounds such as rain.  There's music to help you relax as well, and stories to help you get to sleep.  There's also the Daily Calm which is a daily 10 minute mix of meditation and inspiration.

With this app you start with 7 Days of Calm. Each day there is a different focus.  You will go through guided breathing, paying attention and a body scan, followed by a session on training your mind, living in the here and now, patience and awareness.  After that you can go into other free areas such as Loving Kindness. There is also 7 Days of Sleep which you listen to in the evening to prepare your mind and body for sleep - the meditation voice is over the top of the ambient nature sounds.  At the end is the suggestion to do a body scan later in bed - you can choose the time for this from 3 minutes to 15 minutes. 

Calm also contains timed unguided meditations where you can choose an end bell or to have a bell playing at regular intervals to bring your mind back to meditating.  I have used the Calm scenes several times recently to help me fall asleep.  I assumed (wrongly) that after a certain time the ambient sounds would stop, however when I woke up in the morning they were still playing - possibly this helped me to get a deeper sleep, though I'm not sure.

What apps have you used to help you get a deep and relaxing sleep?

Innovative leadership

Over the past few weeks I've been involved in a design thinking project at school aimed at coming up with a new model for tech integration.  It was interesting to see the approach that was taken, with candidates focusing on different things - either the logistics, or the learning, or some new technology.  As a result of this process, it was interesting to read Scott McLeod's blog post today entitled 18 things that leaders of innovative schools do differently.  In this post Scott writes about the TIES conference and how at the Leadership Seminar they looked at a variety of innovative schools from around the world to see what the leaders of these schools are doing differently.  He asked - which of these are most important, which are being done well and which need more attention?  The interesting thing, something that I was really heartened to read, is that this list does not include a focus on the new technologies.  The focus is much more on things that empower students and teachers.  So to answer the question which on the list are most important, here are my thoughts:
  • Creating an atmosphere of safety and trust so that teachers can take risk with support.
  • Leaders being willing to take risks themselves.
  • Empowering student choice, building on intrinsic motivation.
  • Personalising academic pathways that take account of students' interests, skills and talents.
  • Reducing the number of things on everyone's plate by focusing on the few things that are really important - tied in to the mission and purpose of the school.
  • Time for meaningful collaboration, including protocols for making decisions.
  • Distributed leadership.
  • Not just being concerned with the "spark" of innovation, but also having the depth of knowledge to tie this to student learning.
  • Getting rid of "tall poppy" environments.
One of Scott's 18 things is in bold - he has added the emphasis showing what he feels is most important:  innovative leaders are able to help teachers translate big ideas from mission and vision statements into day-to-day instructional practice.  I like this statement a lot as well.  It makes me think of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours to become an expert (outlier), and although the notion that anyone can become an expert after a certain number of hours of practice has now been debunked, innovative leaders do need that knowledge and understanding of the day-to-day of teaching (which translates into about 10 years of teaching experience to get to the 10,000 hours).  In addition, to be that innovative leader an educator is required to be a reflective practitioner with a passion for excellence, someone with strong values, in particular integrity, and someone who demonstrates empathy.  Without these last two, in my opinion, someone may try to lead innovation, but will anyone follow?

I'm looking forward to working with Scott at ASB Un-Plugged in February.  Scott will be leading a pre-conference institute on building schools of the future.

Photo Credit: RDV Flickr via Compfight cc

Monday, December 11, 2017

Enhancing the PYP: focusing on the learner

The enhanced PYP is on its way - and to facilitate the transition the IB is sending out emails and informational documents, conducting webinars and developing a series of workshops.  Last week was the webinar on The Learner which together with the document The Learner in the Enhanced PYP was the first deep dive into the changes.  Of course I was more than delighted to see that voice, choice, ownership and agency are at the heart of the enhancements for everyone in the learning community, so that students, in partnership with teachers and others in the community, will be empowered to take charge of what, where, why and with whom they learn, and they will be supported to take meaningful action.

What does agency look like?
First of all it's important to point out that agency is not a skill - it's a mindset.  The image below is taken from one of the slides in the webinar.  It shows agency in action.  It draws on the fact that students are capable learners and natural inquirers.  As Tim Scarrott pointed out on Twitter, "Student - initiated action will be considered a dynamic outcome of agency and an integral part of the learning process that can arise at any time."


What about early learners?
An important change is that the early years range has now expanded to students aged 3-6.  There will be an increased emphasis on play and schools will be able to offer a minimum of 4 units of inquiry each year for this age range.  The key emphasis at this age will be planning uninterrupted time for play, building strong relationships with students and their families creating and maintaining responsive/interactive learning spaces for play and offering many opportunities for exploration and expression.  Basically we are recognising that learning is play and play is learning.  Ply is a vehicle for learners to make sense of the world and teachers need to notice and name where the learning is in the play.  They can look for the ATL and learner profile attributes that are being developed through play.

How do assessment and action work in the enhanced PYP?
There will be a shift in focus from summative assessment to continual monitoring, documenting, self-assessment and feedback.  Action won't be something that happens at the end of a unit - it can also be something that takes place over a period of time.  Action is a manifestation of student agency.  The graphic below was shared during the webinar illustrating the various elements of action in practice.

These changes will inevitably have a knock on effect on the PYP Exhibition.  Again there is the move away from the Exhibition being an assessment with more emphasis on process rather than product.  Students will have agency about what they want to inquire into.  It will be more student-led as far as design and implementation.  Schools will also be able to choose whether on not the Exhibition sits inside or outside of the Programme of Inquiry - it does not have to be the 6th unit!


I'm super excited that there will be more releases and webinars coming up in 2018.  In January  and March the focus will be on learning and teaching, and in May on the learning community.  The digital resource will be released in August.

Saturday, December 9, 2017

Connecting your classroom - part 2

This is my final post based on the book Your Connected Classroom: A Practical Guide for Teachers.   I agreed to review this book by Eduro Press on Amazon, and these blog posts are my initial thoughts before I write a review.  This post deals with Chapters 6 - 8 which are about media literacy, global connections and parent education.

The authors explain that connecting your classroom is a great way to teach media and digital literacy that is both authentic and purposeful.  Our students are often already confident in using technology for social purposes, and it is our job as teachers to help them see the benefits of using it academically.  Students need to build their skills, for example how to read a search result - especially in these days of "fake news".  Chapter 6 addresses the skills needed such as learning about how Google automatically filters our searches based on our previous history.  It also addresses the CARP test for validating the information found.  A connected classroom is also an ideal time for the teaching of digital citizenship:  how to keep personal information secure, how to build a positive digital footprint, online behaviour and how to deal with some of the undesirable behaviours such as cyberbullying, safety and the availability of explicit material.  The final sections of this chapter deal with issues of academic honesty.

Chapter 7 is all about the skills that students will need to be globally competent.  There are many examples of ways to break down classroom walls and connect with the "real-world" such as virtual field trips, Google Expeditions and exploring using Google Earth and Google Maps.  Other options include connecting with "experts" using live video chat such as Skype.  There are other tools that will allow you to connect with people not in your close time-zone, such as VoiceThread and blogging.  Of course blogging and other social media can also allow you to open up your own classroom to the world.  There are pages and pages of tips for getting started with all these projects in this chapter.

Chapter 8 is about reaching out to parents so that they understand your purpose for using technology to create a connected classroom.  Parents need to be made aware of how learning today is very different from the times when they were at school and the ways that they can support their children at home.

I'm very grateful to Kim Cofino for sending me a copy of this book and I'll be condensing my three posts about it into one review within the next few days.

Photo Credit: The Fanboy Flickr via Compfight cc

Friday, December 8, 2017

It's not about the tech, it's about the learning

Let me start by saying that the image on the left is ironic - it is deliberately contrary to what I'd expect from a teacher designing projects and engagements for students.  I'm writing this post after a pretty fraught couple of weeks at school where my mantra has been "it's about the learning, not about the tech", so it was great to read this same sentiment right at the start of Chapter 5 in Your Connected Classroom: A Practical Guide for Teachers today.  To recap, I'm reading this new book from Eduro Press in order to write a review on Amazon - and at the same time I'm blogging about it.  Anyway, my heart was singing as I read the above statement, and I'm convinced that this is the most important chapter in the book so far, as it deals with designing rich learning experiences (both with and without technology).  The authors start by telling us to "mentally toss out whatever you've done before and start from scratch.  Forget about your curriculum documents and resources and start with just the end goal: what you want students to know and be able to do and develop from there.  The idea behind this is to give you the freedom to re-imagine the unit completely differently than you may have taught it before."

The design process envisioned by Eduro centres around the APLE planner (authentic, purposeful experience leading through a logical structure for the creation of a product).  It draws upon UbD, PBL, SAMR and the MYP Design Cycle - all great models that I have used for years when designing learning engagements.  I was really curious to see how all these elements combined into one planner.  In a nutshell, the design is as follows:
  • Start with the relevant standards you want to assess
  • Think about how to make this content relevant to students - in particular how it connects to the real-world
  • Identify an essential question - one that is open and inspires curiosity and interest and one that cannot be Googled
  • Think about what authentic product students will create to demonstrate understanding - and possibly think about the audience for this product
  • Think about the use of SAMR so that technology is used purposefully.  Also consider that the finished product does not have to use tech.
  • Break the creative process into steps, so that students can dive deeply into the content and so that at each step you can formatively assess their understanding.
The important idea here is that as a teacher you are facilitating the learning, not directly teaching.  As the Eduro team point out this is more work in the planning stage, but less during the actual teaching.  The stages follow a clear path:  
  • Provocation/exploration/research - a hook to get students into the student-led investigation where they are learning the content.  As a teacher you are providing the resources for students to explore to develop understanding.
  • Planning the finished product - the balance I've always tried to stick to here is that 60% of time should be on pre-production, and 40% on production and post production (a great tip I learned some years ago from Bernajean Porter).  Generally I've found that students initially don't like this balance, but that if there is any less than 60% of time spent on planning then the finished product really lacks depth.  Students eventually do come to realise that time spent planning is really valuable.
  • Creating - it's great to allow class time for this so that you get to check in with each student to  understand how they are progressing.  When I think back to the time I spent teaching MYP design tech, all of the creating was done in class.
  • Reflecting and evaluating learning - this stage is where students get feedback and where they are involved in self-reflection.
Chapter 5 ends with several links to APLE and design resources.  This is a hugely valuable chapter, and for one I am certainly going to prototype this process with my students.

Photo Credit: Photo Extremist Flickr via Compfight cc

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Connecting your classroom

It's a cyclone day today!  It has been pouring with rain for hours in Mumbai which is really unusual as generally there is not a drop of rain between October and June - but today the rain is a result of Cyclone Ochki and the Education Department in Mumbai has declared it's a holiday for schools in the city today.  Classes at my school have been cancelled, and I've had the unexpected bonus of a free day to catch up with friends over email, and to read and blog.

Last month I noticed a post on Facebook by Kim Cofino.  Kim mentioned that Eduro Learning has now set up a new enterprise, Eduro Press, for publishing books.  The first book is called Your Connected Classroom: A Practical Guide for Teachers and it's available on Amazon.  Kim offered to give a review copy to her connections who were willing to review the book on Amazon - and I was happy to do this.  I haven't yet finished reading the book, but decided that I'd also blog about it - and this post is based on the first 4 chapters of the book that I read this morning.

The book starts with a discussion about what a connected classroom is.  Technology can be used to connect students beyond the physical limitations of space and time in the traditional classroom.  Students can connect to each other as part of a virtual classroom where resources, materials and discussions can be shared, as well as connecting to other students and classes around the world.  When students are connected, it's the ideal "teachable moment" to introduce important issues such as digital citizenship, academic honesty and so on in an authentic context.  This is important both in a "closed" virtual classroom as well as when students are publishing publicly for others.  It's likely this would also provide a good opportunity for discussion about topics such as international mindedness, culture and community building, which might not otherwise be addressed.

One emphasis that I really like in these chapters is the purposeful use of technology - not being fixed on the tool but instead thinking about how to transform the learning experiences for students.  The book explains very clearly several models of technology integration such as SAMR, developed by Dr Ruben Puentedura (who incidentally is coming to ASB Un-Plugged this year), and TPACK.  SAMR is basically giving you a framework in which to view learning tasks, and it also gives you the language to have conversations about the "so what" of technology-rich learning.  I've written about the model a number of times on this blog - and these remain the most popular of all my posts (click here to see an example SAMR being used to transform learning).  TPACK works well with SAMR to use technology with a focus on learning (another popular blog post), as TPACK looks at the 3 critical domains of knowledge (technological, pedagogical and content) and strives for a balance in all 3 when designing learning engagements.  The book gives several examples of how teachers can use SAMR and TPACK together to help teachers evaluate the use of technology.

Kim recently spoke at Learning2 about her struggle as a student with maths.  My struggle was with languages.  At school I tried to learn both French and German unsuccessfully.  However when given a purpose for learning, such as actually moving to a new country as was the case when I started to learn Dutch, the learning became much easier.  There is a lovely quote at the end of Chapter 2 that I really related to:
To learn another language, one must take risks and acknowledge that his/her lens isn't the only lens to view the world.  This opens the door for empathy and tolerance.
I thought a lot about this because I'm currently designing some new Category 1 workshops for the PYP and the first modules are about international mindedness.  It's really clear from this quote how language is important in strengthening relationships and the building of international mindedness, which is at the heart of all 4 IB programmes.

Chapters 3 and 4 are about becoming a connected teacher and managing a connected classroom.  Of course if you are not connected to others as a teacher it will be really challenging to find ways to connect your students!  These chapters outline how to go about building a personal learning network (PLN) and explain the difference between a community and a network - for example when you join Facebook you join a community, but within that you network to connect to people you know or who share similar interests.  A quick look at my Facebook groups shows that I have some professional groups such as the PYP Workshop Leaders Network and the International School Teachers group, and I have other groups based on personal friendships I've made in the various schools where I have taught.  In addition I have groups based on interests such as mindfulness and one group just based around things like events, restaurants and shopping in Mumbai which is a great place to get local recommendations.  These chapters also deal with some of the tools for creating and growing PLNs such as Twitter, and a step by step approach to creating and managing your connected classroom including a number of shared resources that can be accessed using QR codes.

I'm now about halfway through the book and keen to read on and blog about the rest - and to write that Amazon review of course.  Upcoming chapters deal with designing technology-rich learning experiences, media literacy, global connections, parent education and how to continue learning.  The book sells on Amazon for $7.79 which is extremely good value and affordable for all teachers.  Look out for another blog post about the second half of this book in the coming days.

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk Flickr via Compfight cc